An honest citizen and a creative, resourceful policeman just turned a stressful situation into a happy ending.  First, I admit that I brought all this on myself.  It was a beautiful afternoon, and I headed out on a 30-mile bike ride to enjoy the nice weather.  With the fall leaves beginning to peak, I brought along my small compact camera as well as my cell phone which I always take in case of an emergency.  But I forgot to zip the little bag on the back of my bike.  Can you see where this is going?  Sure enough, when I returned home the camera and phone were missing.  Somewhere in the 30 miles behind me they had fallen out onto the road.  The question was where?

Tired as I was, I immediately began to retrace my route by bike, since it began on a portion of road currently closed to cars.  I was sure I knew where they had fallen out, as I had bounced along a washboard-like section of dirt road.  But my search was fruitless.  Not a sign of my missing items.  I returned home to start Plan B – had I enabled “Find my iPhone?”  Who ever thinks they will really need it?  If not, I would try calling the phone.  I was in mid-action when my husband, Rich, got a phone call.  “Are you calling about my wife’s lost phone?”  I heard him say.  His voice didn’t give anything away, but my heart did a flip when he replied “Yes, Officer.”  Hallelujah!  It was news just too good to be true!  An honest citizen had turned in both my camera and my iPhone, but that was only half the story.

Just minutes later, less than an hour after I made my dismaying discovery, the police officer was at our door, camera and phone in hand.  But his tactics for getting them back to us were just short of amazing.  First, my iPhone is password protected, so it was locked and he was unable to use it to find my contact information.  So he checked the pictures on the camera.  He finally located a picture with a van in the background and a legible license plate number.  How resourceful!  But when he ran the number, it came up blank – our daughter and her husband have a new van, and it was too recent for the plates to be in the database yet.  Dead end.  On to more pictures – this time he found photos from our Trans-Superior Cycling Tour, with the title boldly emblazoned on our cycling jerseys.  A google search quickly located Rich’s blog entries about our trip, and revealed our names.  Bingo!  He ran our names through the 911 database, and found a call that Rich made in 2010, which gave him Rich’s cell phone number.  Only he doesn’t use that phone any more.  Fortunately, Rich did leave his new number on his voicemail message.

Even though we offered to come pick up the items, the office delivered them right to our home. Our anxiety melted away when we heard how he had tracked us down, and our faith in people was reaffirmed – both by the person who found the items, and the officer who returned them to us.  We weren’t able to meet the first, but we did entice the latter to sample our homemade apple pie bars.  It was a sweet ending for all of us.

And I checked.  I do have “Find my iPhone” enabled and it works.